Wednesday, January 31, 2007

People have been asking what I think should be done about Isaiah Washington and his homophobic insults hurled at Grey's Anatomy castmate T.R. Knight.

It puts me in mind of the saying in my childhood, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never harm me." Certainly words can be harmful, if we let them be. But they don't have to be.

We need to focus on the people with the real "sticks and stones," a president and Congress that continue to treat lesbians and gays as "3/5th of a human being" and not allowing them to marry, because it will undermine the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. What utter nonsense. Ann and I have been married nearly 25 years and have never felt our marriage even a tiny bit threatened by anyone else getting married. That's what concerns me much more than words, even stupid and hurtful ones.

Surly we need to ignore the latest Hollywood publicist antidote to abominable celebrity behavior - rehab. We know that's phony as a $3 bill. Has anyone who went to rehab ever reported back to us. Come on folks, if you behave like a moron, take it and move on.

So, what is to be done?

The most obvious response is, if ABC doesn't fire Washington, we'll boycott the show. But if such a boycott is successful and endangers the show it will hurt all the cast (including T.R.) and workers involved. This would be extremely unfair since many of them have been very forthcoming in their support of T.R.

So I don't have an easy answer, but I have been toying with an idea that targets sponsors, I'll let you know when I work it out. Till then....

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Once upon a time there was a spanking new Sec'y of Defense in Washington. One who was going to clean up the mess "Baby" Bush had created in Iraq. Bush had accomplished this by listening to a bunch of Neo-con artists who had an agenda of their own - to get control of the Middle East, to show that the U.S. alone could be the new cop on the block.

This of course coincided with the agenda of puppet-master Geppeto Cheney who needed control of Middle East oil for his corporfate buddies. It also met the needs of Baby Bush who needed a "slam dunk" to pump up his 2004 election campaign.

But, alas, the Mission that had been Accomplished quickly fell apart. So the old Secy of Defense who was associated in everybody's minds with the failed mission in Iraq had to go. So the Bush family brought Robert Gates off the bench. And all the newly Democratic-controlled Congress had to do was annoint the new Sec'y. So some noises were made about how the War in Iraq had not really been the success that had been claimed. and despite warnings that Gates was first and foremost a company man, that he would do exactly what his bosses needed done, he was annointed.

Well, as predicted, here's his latest pronouncement. The Boston Globe reports that "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that a congressional resolution opposing President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq undercuts US commanders and 'emboldens the enemy'."

How many times have we heard that from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld that opposition to the decider 'emboldens the enemy'? It didn't take long for the new Sec'y to show his true face. The "Decider" can't brook much opposition.

Friday, January 19, 2007

The national scold strikes again! But this time he may have overstepped the bounds of decency, by no means for the first time.

For a while I have thought that Bill O'Reilly was an extreme right-wing predatory version of Howard Stern - both do more harm than good. Stern, of course, doesn't take himself too seriously (most of the time), O'Reilly takes himself too seriously all the time. The other thing that ties them together is that every time they open their mouths, they say more about themselves than anything in the world around them.

On the January 15 O'Reilly Factor, he had this to say about Shawn Hornbeck -- the young man who had been abducted in Missouri at the age of 11, and was recently almost serendipitously found after being held for four years - "there was an element here that this kid liked about this circumstances," pontificated O'Reilly.

"The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted."

Clearly for O'Reilly not going to school, running around and doing whatever one wants is preferable to the opposite. Interesting Bill! The idea that an 11-year-old child might be scared out of his mind by the situation (as he claims to have been), isn't a possibility for O'Reilly.

I know that for the first time O'Reilly's cable dominance is being challenged by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and he has to feed his audience controversy in order to maintain his dominance. He also has a book to sell and what better way to get media attention than to create a controversy by jumping with both feet into one of the currently hottest news stories.

As usual with no expertise in the matter and no apparent contribution to make O'Reilly is once again shooting his mouth off.

He has said that if it turns out that he is wrong, he will apologize. But, just as with Mel Gibson and Michael Richards, an apology will hardly undo the harm his thoughtless words have done.

A word about the appearance of both the Hornbeck family with Shawn and the Ownby family without son Ben (who was found with Shawn) on The Oprah Show on January 18. To have taken a young man who had been held captive for four years to am appearance on Oprah seems barbaric at best. At a time when he needs as much comfort and security dragging him to appear on a TV talk show seems a bit like throwing him to the lions.

I can't imagine what purpose their appearance served other than exploiting the two families for the entertainment of Oprah's audience. I don't know if they were paid for their appearance, but it certainly will enhance their value in other media - books, TV, films - once again proving the prescience of Andy Warhol's comment about everybody's 15 minutes.

Once they appeared on Oprah they left themselves open to everyone's uninformed opinion about what happened. This seems like the last thing either of these young men need. It certainly won't help the case against their alleged abductor. But I guess the ideal of American culture today is to appear on TV.

Between O'Reilly and Oprah I wonder what chance these young men have of surviving their ordeal.

As someone said last week on Democracy Now, if the main product of Iraq was asparagus we would never have invaded. Although this bypasses the other two key reasons for the invasion (the protection of Israel and getting Bush elected in 2004), it is substantially correct. Here's what Antonia Juhasz says:

"For more than four years, the Bush administration and its oil company cohorts have worked toward the passage of a new oil law for Iraq that would turn its nationalized oil system over to private foreign corporate control. On Thursday January 18, this dream came one step closer to reality when an Iraqi negotiating committee of "national and regional leaders" approved a new hydrocarbon law. The committee chair, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, told Reuters that the draft will go to the Iraqi cabinet next week and, if approved, to the parliament immediately thereafter."

(Juhasz who is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, is also the author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time [HarperCollins, 2006]. She is also contributing author, with John Perkins and others, to A Game as Old as Empire [Berrett-Koehler, February 2007]).

What continues to surprise me - call me naive - is how little coverage this potential oil deal has gotten from the corporate-owned media.

Remember the infamous Cheney Energy Task Force meetings with the oil barons, (WP; Project Censored) to set the Bush energy agenda. Well here's the pay-off. The U.S./British oil companies will get richer. And the war will take the lives of more young U.S. men and women, not to mention countless Iraqi lives.

One of the questions that has been troubling me of late is how long will it be before Cheney goes back to Halliburton? and how many other Bush administration boys will end up in cushy energy jobs?

Thursday, January 18, 2007

It has been suggested that if Jesus returned to earth he would again be crucified. And almost surely at the front of the line with hammer and nails would be the many "Christians" who most aggressively - and falsely - invoke his name to sell their ideological products.

Much the same is unfortunately true of Martin Luther King. If he returned - after reminding us of the yet to be fulfilled dream he would head straight for Riverside Church in New York City where once again his conscience would leave him no choice but to say:

"Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war."

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

I have a suggestion. Here's a war Commander-in-Chief Bush can get involved in and escalate to his heart's content:

The New York Post gossip column Page Six (on Tuesday) claims that Rosie O'Donnell angrily confronted Barbara Walters backstage at The View on Monday. She called Walters a (fucking?) liar, too, the newspaper said. O'Donnell was reportedly angry that Walters didn't call Donald Trump a liar. The newspaper sourced its story about the confrontation by saying "according to spies."

Besides keeping The View constantly in the news, O'Donnell has substantially increased the show's ratings this season. Trump appeared to get no lift from the feud in the ratings when the latest season of The Apprentice started last Sunday. The program's ratings fell short of those from last spring's season premiere. As one commentator put it, The Apprentice ratings weren't rosie.

Short of another Bush war my only other idea is Rosie and Barbara in a steel-cage match refereed by Star Jones, sponsored by Trump.

On Wednesday evening Bush will don his mental flight suit and play soldier again, he will announce an escalation of the war in Iraq. But the people who will die will be our young countrymen and women who he will send to fight his and the GOP's war. Many innocent Iraqis will also die. We have to stop this madness NOW! (Dan)

America Says NO more troops!

Thursday, Jan. 11thA Nationwide Surge of Protestagainst The U.S. military occupation of Iraq

President Bush is expected to reveal his "new strategy” for Iraq on Wednesday evening. Defying the mandate of Americans who voted in November to end the madness and begin to bring our troops home, he will call for an escalation in the number of U.S. combat troops in Iraq.

Let's deliver an immediate and direct response to the president’s call for escalation: NO!

There will be actions in cities and towns across the country within 24 hours of the president’s speech with a simple message:

"America says NO more troops in Iraq!”

Join CODEPINK NYC in a vigil calling for the closure of the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay and an end to state-sanctioned torture. No torture! No troop escalation in Iraq!

Democratic Congressman Gary Ackerman claims to be angry Bush lied to him, yet he has done NOTHING to help stop this ILLEGAL WAR! We must let him know his behavior is against a Democracy for "We are the People" who are demanding an end to this terrible fiasco!

(Directions: Take the Q12 bus from Flushing or the N20-21. Driving: Northern Blvd and 218th street Bayside Queens.)

Monday, January 08, 2007

So you were wondering why over 3,000 young American men and women have been killed since the Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003 and over 17,000 Iraqis have been killed in the last six months and why Bush now wants to send 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle, well check this out from Monday's edition of Democracy Now:

In an article headlined Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity, "The Independent of London is reporting the Iraqi government is drafting a new law that would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude. The law is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days. Foreign oil companies would be allowed to take up to 75 percent of the profits until they have recouped initial drilling costs. After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits -- that is about twice the industry average for such deals. The oil law would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972."

Saturday, January 06, 2007

OSLO, Norway (Jan. 3) (AP) A Lithuanian held on suspicion of theft in an Arctic Norway jail slipped out of custody - literally - by stripping naked, smearing himself with vegetable oil and sliding through the prison bars, police said Wednesday.

"He slipped through the bars on Christmas Eve," said Svein-Erik Jacobsen, operation leader for the Oest-Finnmark Police District. The unusual escape made national news in Norway on Wednesday.

If in your presence an individual tried to sacrifice an American serviceman or woman, would you intervene?

Would you at least protest?

What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them?

What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them - and then announced his intention to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more?

This is where we stand tonight with the BBC report of President Bush’s “new Iraq strategy,” and his impending speech to the nation, which, according to a quoted senior American official, will be about troop increases and “sacrifice.”

The president has delayed, dawdled and deferred for the month since the release of the Iraq Study Group.

He has seemingly heard out everybody, and listened to none of them.

If the BBC is right - and we can only pray it is not - he has settled on the only solution all the true experts agree cannot possibly work: more American personnel in Iraq, not as trainers for Iraqi troops, but as part of some flabby plan for “sacrifice.”

Sacrifice!

More American servicemen and women will have their lives risked.

More American servicemen and women will have their lives ended.

More American families will have to bear the unbearable and rationalize the unforgivable - “sacrifice” - sacrifice now, sacrifice tomorrow, sacrifice forever.

And more Americans - more even than the two-thirds who already believe we need fewer troops in Iraq, not more - will have to conclude the president does not have any idea what he’s doing - and that other Americans will have to die for that reason.

It must now be branded as propaganda - for even the president cannot truly feel that very many people still believe him to be competent in this area, let alone “the decider.”

But from our impeccable reporter at the Pentagon, Jim Miklaszewski, tonight comes confirmation of something called “surge and accelerate” - as many as 20,000 additional troops - for “political purposes” …

This, in line with what we had previously heard, that this will be proclaimed a short-term measure, for the stated purpose of increasing security in and around Baghdad, and giving an Iraqi government a chance to establish some kind of order.

This is palpable nonsense, Mr. Bush.

If this is your intention - if the centerpiece of your announcement next week will be “sacrifice” - sacrifice your intention, not more American lives!

As Senator Joseph Biden has pointed out, the new troops might improve the ratio our forces face relative to those living in Baghdad (friend and foe), from 200 to 1, to just 100 to 1.”Sacrifice?”

No.

A drop in the bucket.

The additional men and women you have sentenced to go there, sir, will serve only as targets.

They will not be there “short-term,” Mr. Bush; for many it will mean a year or more in death’s shadow.

This is not temporary, Mr. Bush.

For the Americans who will die because of you, it will be as permanent as it gets.

The various rationales for what Mr. Bush will reportedly re-christen “sacrifice” constitute a very thin gruel, indeed.

The former labor secretary, Robert Reich, says Senator John McCain told him that the “surge” would help the “morale” of the troops already in Iraq.

If Mr. McCain truly said that, and truly believes it, he has either forgotten completely his own experience in Vietnam … or he is unaware of the recent Military Times poll indicating only 38 percent of our active military want to see more troops sent … or Mr. McCain has departed from reality.

Then there is the argument that to take any steps toward reducing troop numbers would show weakness to the enemy in Iraq, or to the terrorists around the world.

This simplistic logic ignores the inescapable fact that we have indeed already showed weakness to the enemy, and to the terrorists.

We have shown them that we will let our own people be killed for no good reason.

We have now shown them that we will continue to do so.

We have shown them our stupidity.

Mr. Bush, your judgment about Iraq - and now about “sacrifice” - is at variance with your people’s, to the point of delusion.

Your most respected generals see no value in a “surge” - they could not possibly see it in this madness of “sacrifice.”

The Iraq Study Group told you it would be a mistake.

Perhaps dozens more have told you it would be a mistake.

And you threw their wisdom back, until you finally heard what you wanted to hear, like some child drawing straws and then saying “best two out of three - best three out of five - hundredth one counts.”

Your citizens, the people for whom you work, have told you they do not want this, and moreover, they do not want you to do this.

Yet once again, sir, you have ignored all of us.

Mr. Bush, you do not own this country!

To those Republicans who have not broken free from the slavery of partisanship - those bonded, still, to this president and this administration, and now bonded to this “sacrifice”- proceed at your own peril.

John McCain may still hear the applause of small crowds - he has somehow inured himself to the hypocrisy, and the tragedy, of a man who considers himself the ultimate realist, courting the votes of those who support the government telling visitors to the Grand Canyon that it was caused by the Great Flood.

That Mr. McCain is selling himself off to the irrational right, parcel by parcel, like some great landowner facing bankruptcy, seems to be obvious to everybody but himself.

Or, maybe it is obvious to him and he simply no longer cares.

But to the rest of you in the Republican Party:

We need you to speak up, right now, in defense of your country’s most precious assets - the lives of its citizens who are in harm’s way.

If you do not, you are not serving this nation’s interests - nor your own.

November should have told you this.

The opening of the new Congress on Wednesday and Thursday should tell you this.

Next time, those missing Republicans will be you.

And to the Democrats now yoked to the helm of this sinking ship, you proceed at your own peril, as well.

President Bush may not be very good at reality, but he and Mr. Cheney and Mr.Rove are still gifted at letting American troops be killed, and then turning their deaths to their own political advantage.

The equation is simple. This country does not want more troops in Iraq.

It wants fewer.

Go and make it happen, or go and look for other work.

Yet you Democrats must assume that even if you take the most obvious of courses, and cut off funding for the war, Mr. Bush will ignore you as long as possible, or will find the money elsewhere, or will spend the money meant to protect the troops, and re-purpose it to keep as many troops there as long as he can keep them there.

Because that’s what this is all about, is it not, Mr. Bush?

That is what this “sacrifice” has been for.

To continue this senseless, endless war.

You have dressed it up in the clothing, first of a hunt for weapons of mass destruction, then of liberation … then of regional imperative … then of oil prices … and now in these new terms of “sacrifice” - it’s like a damned game of Colorforms, isn’t it, sir?

This senseless, endless war.

But - it has not been senseless in two ways.

It has succeeded, Mr. Bush, in enabling you to deaden the collective mind of this country to the pointlessness of endless war, against the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

It has gotten many of us used to the idea - the virtual “white noise” - of conflict far away, of the deaths of young Americans, of vague “sacrifice” for some fluid cause, too complicated to be interpreted except in terms of the very important-sounding but ultimately meaningless phrase, “the war on terror.”

And the war’s second accomplishment - your second accomplishment, sir - is to have taken money out of the pockets of every American, even out of the pockets of the dead soldiers on the battlefield, and their families, and to have given that money to the war profiteers.

Because if you sell the Army a thousand Humvees, you can’t sell them any more until the first thousand have been destroyed.

The service men and women are ancillary to the equation.

This is about the planned obsolescence of ordnance, isn’t, Mr. Bush? And the building of detention centers? And the design of a $125 million courtroom complex at Gitmo, complete with restaurants.

At least the war profiteers have made their money, sir.

And we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

You have insisted, Mr. Bush, that we must not lose in Iraq, that if we don’t fight them there we will fight them here - as if the corollary were somehow true, that if by fighting them there we will not have to fight them here.

And yet you have re-made our country, and not re-made it for the better, on the premise that we need to be ready to “fight them here” anyway, and always.

In point of fact, even if the civil war in Iraq somehow ended tomorrow, and the risk to Americans there ended with it, we would have already suffered a defeat - not fatal, not world-changing, not, but for the lives lost, of enduring consequence.

But this country has already lost in Iraq, sir.

Your policy in Iraq has already had its crushing impact on our safety here.

You have already fomented new terrorism and new terrorists.

You have already stoked paranoia.

You have already pitted Americans, one against the other.

We … will have to live with it.

We … will have to live with what, of the fabric of our nation, you have already “sacrificed.”

The only object still admissible in this debate is the quickest and safest exit for our people there.

But you - and soon, Mr. Bush, it will be you and you alone - still insist otherwise.

And our sons and daughters and fathers and mothers will be sacrificed there tonight, sir, so that you can say you did not “lose in Iraq.”

Our policy in Iraq has been criticized for being indescribable, for being inscrutable, for being ineffable.

But it is all too easily understood now.

First we sent Americans to their deaths for your lie, Mr. Bush.

Now we are sending them to their deaths for your ego.

If what is reported is true - if your decision is made and the “sacrifice”is ordered - take a page instead from the man at whose funeral you so eloquently spoke this morning - Gerald Ford:

Put pragmatism and the healing of a nation ahead of some kind of misguided vision.

Atone.

Sacrifice, Mr. Bush?

No, sir, this is not “sacrifice.” This has now become ” human sacrifice.”

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

We know that no matter what facade the Bush admin- istration puts on its actions, it will, when push comes to shove, be business as usual. Escalation of the war against Iraq and domestic policies to enrich its supporters and social policies to feed the far right demon.

Will the Democrats fight for the people who elected them in November - us - or will they capitulate and let Bush, Cheney and Rove have it all their own way. They will try to do this behind closed doors. We have to open the Congressional gates and let the fresh air in.

Here's the way the Washington Post describes the situation:

"Democratic leaders set to take control of Congress tomorrow are facing mounting pressure from liberal activists to chart a more confrontational course on Iraq and the issues of human rights and civil liberties, with some even calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

"The carefully calibrated legislative blitz that Democrats have devised for the first 100 hours of power has left some activists worried the passion that swept the party to power in November is already dissipating.A cluster of protesters will greet the new congressional leaders at the Capitol tomorrow. They will not be disgruntled conservatives wary of Democratic control, but liberals demanding a ban on torture, an end to warrantless domestic spying and a restoration of curbed civil liberties."

"The protest will be followed by an evening forum calling for the president's impeachment, led by the Center for Constitutional Rights, antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and a pro-impeachment group called World Can't Wait."

At the moment the war is at the core of everything. Until that's settled - ended - little else can be done. Bush will throw a few sops to the Democrats to take home to their constituents, but he will fight to preserve his Middle East crusade and all of the anti-human rights policies that he and his cohorts have put in place over the last six years - from the Patriot Act to the endorsement of torture and the destruction of habeas Corpus.

The Democrats will either fight for the American Dream or throw it out with the terrorism bathwater. The Democrats right-wing tendencies will undoubtedly prevail unless we hold their feet to the fire of democracy and freedom.

"The events in New York City are part of Not One More Death, Not One More Dollar events in more than 200 communities nationwide coordinated by the American Friends Service Committee, an affiliate of United for Peace and Justice.

"These activities will commemorate those lost in Iraq – both military and civilian, both U.S. and Iraqi – on the day following the sad announcement that the 3,000th U.S. serviceperson has died.

"The war memorial events will mourn the human cost of the war, call for the troops to come home, and support funding an Iraqi-led reconstruction of the war-torn country."

"So far, more U.S. lives have been lost in Iraq than in the first four years of the Vietnam War. In addition, more than 20,000 U.S. servicepersons have been seriously injured in Iraq. Estimates of Iraqi casualties vary widely, but a recent Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet put the figure as high as 600,000 Iraqis killed.

"'The loss of U.S. and Iraqi lives in this immoral war and occupation is devastating. We will stand in our communities to remind our neighbors that we are the only ones who can compel the Congress to end the war, end the dying and bring the troops home,' said David Dubnau of Northern Manhattan Neighbors for Peace and Justice."

Brooklyn, NYJan. 2, 2007, 6:00 - 7:30pm Grand Army Plaza(Prospect Park West and Union St.) Brooklyn Parents for Peace will hold a peaceful vigil in sad commemoration of the now 3000 dead U.S. military personnel as well as the countless thousands of dead Iraqis. Please dress warmly and bring friends and neighbors to mark this solemn occcasion. We will provide signs,candles and black armbands for participants. For more information visit us at brooklynpeace.org or call 718-624-5921.